Fatigue, At The Beginning And The End

I'm so tired now.  I've been tired for so long, I want to close a door and cry.  Mother used to do that sometimes.  But there's no door here for me to go behind and close.  And the tears won't come now, anyway, because I don't have the emotional energy, or even a space inside me, to allow anyone else to see them.  For crying in the presence of others is always an involuntary form of sharing, or at least diverting one's attentions.  Those activities require energies I just don't have right now.

Maybe it's the day, and my hope that it will be my last on this block , that's so drained me.  But taking hormones does that to you, too.

The first time you take them, you're expecting something to happen, even though the doctor or whoever prescribes them tells you nothing will, at least not for a while.  Two pills:  One, the anti-androgen, is white and has the texture but not the taste of an aspirin tablet.  The other--the estrogen--is small, with a hard shell in a shade of candy-coated cow piss, which is pretty much what it tastes like.  Not that I've ever tasted cow piss, candy-coated or otherwise.

After I took those pills every day for a couple of months, I couldn't notice any difference.  But Vivian did.  She called me that day, ostensibly because she wanted to return something I couldn't recall leaving at her place.  It'd been a few months since she pronounced me "too much of a woman" for her tastes and broke up our relationship.  She'd found a watch with a woven black leather band when she was cleaning, she said.  And indeed she gave it to me when we met for supper that night, in a restaurant a few blocks from where I was staying.  

But there had to be another reason for her wanting to see me; I could hear it in her voice when she called.  I couldn't imagine her wanting sex with me again.  So what, I wondered, did she want?

As I cut into the piece of chicken I ordered, I got my answer.  She called my name--my old one.  I looked up at her.  "Something's different about you," she intoned. 

"What?"

She reached across the table and dabbed my cheek, where she used to stroke with her fingertips.  "It feels different."

"How so?"

"It's...softer."

"Huh?"

"It really feels softer."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"All right," I said.  "I'll confess something:  I am taking hormones."  Her face grew longer.  "The doctor said my skin would get softer.  But not this quickly."

Then she asked me to stand up.  "Wow!  Your body's changing."

"How so?"

"None of your clothes fit you right."

"I think I've gained some weight."

"Maybe you have.  But it's in your rear.  And you're growing boobs!"

I couldn't notice those changes yet, I said.  And I felt like I needed more sleep.  "But," she cut me off, "you don't seem depressed.  Or angry.  You always were one or both, especially near the end of our relationship."

"To tell you the truth, I'm not.  I don't even feel sad very much.  Maybe..."

She cut me off again. "Maybe you accept things, or are resigned to them."

"You could say that."

She could. None of it surprised her.  Before that night, I hadn't told her I was taking hormones.  In fact, I hardly told anybody.  I don't know who could' or would've told her.  But I knew, then, that she'd asked me to supper so she could find out what I was like on hormones.  Why else would she want to see me again?

The old lady whose name I never knew is looking my way again. Who could' or  would've told her?

Make it tomorrow, please. I'm so tired.  All I want is to have my operation, then to get some rest.

Fatigue

There are only two weeks left in the course I'm teaching.  It's a good thing, too. I'm tired.  Actually, it's more than that.  I just feel like I have nothing more to give, at least in that class or as an educator.  


Colleagues tell me it's because I've taught a lot this year.  But I've taught more, and had more difficult situations, than I've had this year.  And the class I have now is great:  they're juniors and seniors.  In fact, two of them have only one more semester to go. Some are "traditional" college age, while others are older.  And they're all polite, respectful and even nice people.  Hey, they even gave me a birthday cake!


Yesterday, another instructor said the same things, almost verbatim, when I asked, "How are you doing?"  So I'm wondering whether it might have something to do with the season, or the fact that he's also near the end of his course.


My feeling of "running on empty" has, I think, something to do with the fact that I'm tired of school atmospheres in general.  Or maybe it's the other way around.  Whatever it is, I feel that whatever got me through all of those classes, all of those years, of teaching--and, for that matter, being a student--is something that's run its course, like some part of one's former body chemistry.  An old hormone, enzyme or something is depleted, or simply gone. What will take its place--or whether anything should take its place--I don't know.


Last semester, I had one class I wasn't crazy about.  I guess that isn't bad when you consider that I taught four.  But a lot of the students in that class--mainly freshmen of "traditional" college age--really were wasting their time there.  Perhaps if they were to return to school and take the class at some later date, it might be worthwhile for them.  And, if I were their prof, perhaps it would be for me, too.


They weren't bad kids, really.  They were, well, kids--in every way that word means.  They had no patience for the things they needed to do, but they'd waste time on all kinds of pointless and simply stupid things.  I guess in one sense, they are the way I once was, which is exactly the opposite of how I am now.  They--like my long-ago self--have only known the world in which they currently live, which is to say they only know of one life, and most of them only know one way to live it.  Yet they do not think of time as finite or the future is imminent.  They have some vague notion that the future is some very distant place at which they will arrive, but they have no idea of what it might be like.  If they have any vision of it, they got it from looking at images of people who are completely unlike themselves and about whom they really know nothing.  


I, on the other hand, stepped into a new life relatively recently, and understand that I have a limited amount of time remaining. Sometimes I lose patience with people who ought to know better--who include some co-workers and people higher in the chain of command--because I know I don't have time for bullshit.  It's a sort of survivor's mentality and, at times, it makes me seem intolerant and even abrasive to some of my colleagues.  There are some things about which I am certain, or at least feel entitled to have my own opinions, because of experiences I have.  Sometimes they--very condescendingly--try to tell me that it's only my experience and that I am perceiving it wrongly. Or they try to tell me I didn't experience what I've experienced, when they haven't a clue about it--or, in some cases, about their own experience. 


Perhaps it's dealing with people like that on a nearly daily basis that's wearing me down.  Mind you, not all of my colleagues or coworkers are that way.  But enough are to make any part of the campus a chamber that sucks out my energy.

Bikeless Blues

Today was one of  those drop-dead gorgeous days when I wanted to be on my bike.  Tomorrow I go to the gynecologist again.  Please, Dr. Ronica, say yes.  Tell me it's OK to get back on the bike.  


And what was I doing today?  Giving an exam, grading more papers...You get the idea.  Just like yesterday, except that today had sunshine and warm weather that I couldn't enjoy.


Yesterday it was chilly and rainy until the evening.  Then, a warm breeze swept through the darkened sky and seemed to break up the clouds.  I purposely got off the subway a stop earlier than I usually do just so I could walk a bit more.  


Tonight I was talking to another prof who's been teaching about as long as I've been.  We concurred that this indeed has been a stressful semester. "Usually, I feel burnt out during the last week or two of the semester.  But this time, I felt that way about five weeks before it ended." The difference between me and him, I said, is that I think I started to feel spent, used up or whatever you want to call it even earlier than that.  I realize now that we came to drag ourselves through significant parts of this semester for essentially the same reasons:  our workload and class sizes increased, we're getting older and the atmosphere in the college and department is not a happy one.  And I think that the negative energy in there wore on me even more than it did before mainly because I noticed it more.  Actually, I didn't notice it so much as I felt as if I no longer had a filter against it, as I seem not to have some of the other filters I used to have.  Whether that's a consequence of my operation or anything related to it, I don't know.

It's Not Because You're A ....

I didn't ride my bike yesterday:  I didn't have enough time to get to the doctor after finishing work.  The sad thing is that I almost didn't make the appointment because I almost didn't get out of work at the time I'm supposed to.


And I fully expect that someone went looking for me long after my appointed hours, didn't find me and will make--or has already made--a complaint about me.  Then my department chair, the provost or the legal compliance officer will give me a lecture, if not a dressing-down.  And the fact that I've stayed until nearly midnight on days when my commitments ended at 4 pm will be conveniently forgotten.

Heaven forbid that I should leave workplace when I'm done with whatever work I had to do, whether or not said work was in my job description.

I work all those hours and go well above all expectations explicit and implicit expectations, yet I make less than a bus driver.  And people from whom one normally believe an account of current weather conditions suddenly have more credibility than the Pope once had among Catholics when they make a complaint about me.  The powers-that-be insist that it has nothing to do with my being transgender.  Uh-huh, and Hemingway accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.


Is it any wonder that I'm always tired, or seem to be?  Wait a minute:  I didn't feel as tired after riding as I do now.  And, after pedalling there and bike, I don't have the kind of anger I've been expressing.  Could it be that I'm having "withdrawal" symptoms--from missing one day of riding after riding two days in a row? 

On the other hand, a lot of other profs and employees at the college feel the way I feel--or so they've told me, without my prompting or asking.   So maybe it really isn't about being trans, after all.  It's great to know that I'm in such an egalitarian place.

Fine But Tired

The papers are piling up. The days are getting shorter. And the weather forecast is for combinations of rain, sleet and snow until ntil tomorrow afternoon. This can only mean the end of the semester and the beginning of winter are coming. So is Christmas. And I haven't done a thing about it. Oh, no!: A male pattern of mine won't change, at least not this year: Most likely, I'll shop and mail my cards at the last minute. At least I'm not doing that out of procrastination: I have so little time and my body is still catching up to my surgery. Everything feels fine, but I'm tired.

Between Seasons: Middle Age

Back to campus today, after the move. Now I'm feeling really tired. It's not just from the move, though.

Today was one of those gray, rainy days on which the fallen brown leaves seem even more sere than they did on the windy days that preceded it. And the now-earthbound foliage lacks the color it had in the days when it was about to fall from the now-bare branches. At the same time, the sky doesn't have the stark clarity of the clear winter sky after snow has fallen.

Someone once told me that what I've just described is a very good metaphor for middle age. Some would say I am of that age, but I don't feel I'm much like the scene I've just described. Still, it feeds, feeds off of, and feeds again any fatigue one may be feeling.

Today I talked with one colleague who can't wait for the semester to be over. I'm sure she's not the only one who feels that way now. At least by the end of the semester, there will be an interlude of cheer from the lights and colors, induced though they may be, of the holiday season.